As I have stated before, when you are working on body part splits, extended recovery time is not as much a factor. If you work your chest on Mondays, you have a week before you give it direct work again. However, if you are working full body or a Squat or DL program where you repeat work multiple times a week, then recovery becomes more of a factor.

I was not talking of that kind of split program.

For over the first year when I first got back into lifting, I did the classic weider split in that I did chest, shoulders, tri's and abs MWF, then legs, back and bicep T-th one week, then reversed that the next week. So, in effect, i worked every body part, such as my chest, back whatever, five times every two weeks and I never felt the need for recovery and I made fairly steady progress.

Perhaps it was because I never really tried to go for a max, I did 3x8 with about 75% max or so, which goes to your point of this type of average joe workout not being intense enough, was why I didn't need to recover. Or maybe it was because I didn't do any specific exercise more than once every two weeks, I rotated 5 exercises for each body part, is why. I don't know.

But, I also progressed pretty well and never once went backwards with a weight. Once I could press 3x8 with 30 pound DB pretty easily, I moved up to 35 pounds and never touched the 30's again with that exercise for example.

So, clearly I made progress without regular recovering. I also think there is something to be said for lifting pretty hard, but not to the max, every damn day, in that you get a certain hardness and mentality for being consistent in your effort. I mean that makes sense too. Work decently hard every day and you're bound to progress, right?

Now, having said that, I can well imagine I would have progressed faster had I maxed out more, focussed more on specific lifts, and consequently rested more too. So, I agree that recovery is important to getting stronger if your goal is to get stronger relatively quickly, efficiently, and safely.

But overall, I'm with BtB on this one. There's lots of ways to skin a cat, and everybody is different.

This guy is saying in the article that you must recover, or you will ultimately not progress. Perhaps. Seems to make sense. But, then again, maybe not.